


things (un)said

by thesecretdetectivecollection



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 14:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9761885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretdetectivecollection/pseuds/thesecretdetectivecollection
Summary: Some things don't need to be said.That doesn't mean it isn't nice to hear them for once, though.(in which Jamie tries to be romantic even in the face of a Neville who's stuck in banter mode)





	

_Happy Valentine’s Day, James._  
  
The text doesn’t come at the stroke of midnight. It comes later than that, or Jamie assumes, because it’d been half past eleven when he’d gotten in, and he’d been busy for a while, and so it had to be past midnight by now, past midnight on February 14 th.  
  
And the only reason Jamie isn’t even slightly offended at being texted at this completely inappropriate hour is because Gary’s lying right next to him, texting him because he’s an idiot who can't just say the words. As far as idiots go, though, he's a pretty good one. Maybe Jamie is biased though, because whatever else Gary may be, he is definitely Jamie's.

(Jamie's idiot, that is, but still.)  
  
“You too, love,” Jamie says softly, less out of romantic intentions than because it makes Gary vaguely uncomfortable to have this sort of attention for longer than 1.4 seconds unless they’re making out or having sex.  
  
(And they’re not doing either at the minute. Jamie’s good, but he’s nearly forty, he needs a bit of recovery time, goddammit.)  
  
Normally, not-saying things suits Jamie just fine—he’s a modern man, but lads from Bootle aren’t known for being particularly… eloquent. Or in touch with their feelings. Or whatever.  
  
Jamie’s better at actions than he is at words. Always has been. And after his actions on the pitch hadn’t been good enough, he’d had nothing but his sorry words to fall back on—not that that hadn’t worked out well, he reminds himself with a smirk, feeling little beads of sweat on his forehead and Gary’s warmth at his side.  
  
His most intimate adult relationship (before Gary) hadn’t even been romantic (not that he hadn’t had girlfriends, occasional boyfriends, he wasn’t a _monk_ )—it had been Stevie. His best friend, his teammate, his captain.  
  
(Stevie, who in his book had captioned a picture of them ‘teammates and soulmates.’ Stevie, who never said how he felt, but he wrote it, just that once, and that had been more than enough. Stevie, who on the scale of emotional constipation scored just slightly lower than Jamie did, apparently.)  
  
Still, Stevie had understood—lads from Huyton aren’t known for being eloquent, either.  
  
But then Jamie’d retired and met Gary, and things had sort of just… clicked into place.  
  
There were lots of clichés about it, of course, opposites attract, and there’s a thin line between hate and love, and so on. But they weren’t opposites, not really. Just rivals and international teammates turned reluctant colleagues turned even-more-reluctant friends, turned somehow-not-at-all reluctant… guys who had sex a lot and made out in locked dressing rooms at work like idiot teenagers.  
  
It had been awhile since they’d made the leap, from friends to whatever they were now—Jamie didn’t know because _they hadn’t fucking talked about it_ , and _oh_ , maybe this was why people kept saying they should.  
  
It wasn’t like they’d never said nice things to each other. They had, they had expressed their, uh, aesthetic appreciation of each other, and their physical appreciation was equally expressed, if not in words. They’d even done the whole ‘I love you’ thing.

(It had been after the V-word—not virgin, though Jamie mentally made that joke every single time, but Valencia. They’d both been completely shitfaced and, well, _vulnerable_.)

  
So it wasn’t like they’d _never_ said anything. Just, banter was easier, and Gary understood as well as anybody ever had.  
  
But suddenly, Jamie wants to _say_ those things, the things that usually hang unspoken in the silence between them or in the layers of subtext of banter and innuendo.  
  
“Do you ever think about what it would’ve been like?” he asks softly, turning to face Gary, “playing for the same team?”  
  
“Don’t have to wonder. It’s called the England National Team, you idiot," Gary says lazily, eyes closed. "You’re a bit young for dementia, Carra. Then again, you didn’t have much brain to spare, I guess."  
  
“England isn’t the same, Gaz, you know that.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“You know why not. Because we never really had a chance of winning for England, did we. Because I played for Liverpool first. You know I prioritized them and they prioritized me, and England... didn't. And my Liverpool teammates didn’t hate me. Not the good ones.”  
  
“I never hated you.”  
  
“You kinda did, Gaz. I kinda hated you too, for awhile there.”  
  
“Emotional lad, you were. Couldn’t compartmentalize.”  
  
Jamie lets out a noisy sigh of frustration.  
  
“I love you.”  
  
“That's sweet, but not right now, J, I need a bit more than half a second to recover. Not as young as I used to be.”  
  
Jamie leans over and kisses him, slow and somehow tame and very… not tame at the same time. He doesn’t slide his hands under Gary’s shirt, doesn’t let them wander, doesn’t even give into the temptation to give his ass a cheeky squeeze just to hear the squeal of indignation Gary always lets out when he does. He just presses one hand to Gary’s cheek (the face one-the other will have to wait) and one to his side, feeling his warmth through his thin t-shirt, and kisses him, for a long, long time.  
  
It’s very still, and somehow Gary knows to keep it that way. He doesn’t try to turn Jamie on, just plants one hand on the side of Jamie’s neck and places the other on his chest. It’s languid, somehow, in the way that it feels like they’re in slow motion while life goes on around them. Or maybe they’re in real time and life is going on at hyperspeed.  
  
Jamie takes his sweet time before he pulls away.  
  
“I love you, Gary Neville.” He says again, slow and grave, in a way that makes the meaning unmistakably clear.  
  
Gary reaches for him and pulls him closer. He doesn’t meet Jamie’s eyes, going a little red. “I love you too,” he whispers.  
  
“Hey Neville? Red looks good on you,” Jamie says softly, running his thumb over Gary’s cheekbone.  
  
“Even though it wasn’t the same red as you?”  
  
“Everything looks good on you,” Jamie says quietly. “I wish it had been the same red, because then we could have done this years and years ago. But I’m glad we got here in the end.”  
  
“Me too.” Gary says, turning up his mouth again, in that way he does when he wants a kiss but is too proud or too stubborn to ask.  
  
Jamie tries to kiss him again, but it’s hard, because he can’t stop smiling, and he’s chuckling a little against his mouth, but Gary doesn’t complain.  
  
“You nearly outed us last night, Gaz,” Jamie whispers, turning and dipping his head low to kiss along Gary’s jaw.  
  
“Hm?” Gary hums, one hand planted solidly in Jamie’s hair, as if he needed any encouragement.  
  
“I mean, come on, you were practically bent over the display, love, it was—well, honestly, love, it was a little sad. You’ve already got me, you don’t have to keep trying to seduce me at work.”  
  
“I just needed to reach the thing! The symbol thing! So I could highlight the damn players I wanted to talk about.”  
  
“Mhm.” Jamie agrees, and Gary’s never met anyone who can squeeze so much sarcasm into such a short non-word, “you might as well have thrown yourself on top of it and begged me to take you.”  
  
“I do not beg, James,” Gary says mildly.  
  
“Still, you can’t do that anymore, Gaz.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Er, my suit pants aren’t quite, uh, forgiving enough.”  
  
“It’s not like you pulled away to give me any space—like a normal lad who wasn’t sleeping with me might have done! And then, when you realized, you thought you were all clever, sliding your hand out from under me like that!”  
  
“It worked! It was subtle!”  
  
“I had a text off Scholesy _within the hour_ , Carra, telling me I had terrible taste in men. And then Giggsy a few hours later, asking if I’d been And then Phil this afternoon, and his didn’t even have any words! It was just different sad faces and then a thumbs up because he probably worried I’d take him too seriously, as if I don’t know the man’s sense of humor after having known him literally _his entire life_. Honestly.”  
  
Jamie looks down at him, wolfish grin on his face. “That’s funny,” he purrs, dropping to kiss along Gary’s neck and smiling at the (expected, but still rewarding, according to the little flutter in his stomach) gasp he earns, “I had a text off Stevie requesting that I not play handsie with you on telly, because then he can’t watch me without feeling slightly ill.”  
  
“Tell him not to watch then.”  
  
“Hey, if Scholesy can watch, Stevie can watch. Which is what I should have told him instead of denying the whole thing.”  
  
“Least your Redders approves.”  
  
“Don’t talk about Redders in bed, Gary.”  
  
“Then what should we talk about?”  
  
“How long’s it gonna take for you to go again, old man?”

"Depends on how good you are, old man."   
  
Jamie chuckles and leans in. This time, when he kisses Gary, his hands _do_ slide under the t-shirt.  
  
“Happy Valentine’s Day, James.”  
  
“You too, love.”  
  
As it happens, they don’t stop there, either. They're not so old after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> look it's late and Valentine's Day is over but I thought of this this morning and I wanted to write it and now it's slightly too late but here it is anyway and i'm very very tired
> 
> also Phil Neville I'm sorry I'm sure you don't text entirely in emoji


End file.
